Archive for December, 2009

The new stuff chronicles #13: thingies!

Movies, Old stuff, RC, The new stuff chronicles, Videogames, XBox | Posted by Zhooibaal
Dec 27 2009

What’s that? No posts for about a half year and then 2 posts on the same day? Must be something special then…

Anyway, time for another new stuff chronicle. This time there isn’t any real theme to it. Some of this, some of that. Let’s get started.

On December 19th, me and my friend Michiel went to Amsterdam to visit the one and only “PC Dumpdag”. In English that would be the PC Dump Day. At PC dump there are many things to be found for little money and some are computer related while others are not. Basicly it’s a computer discount market, but besides computer stuff there are cheap ass remote control helicopters, cheap ass remote control cars, electric razors, movies, games and other useless crap. For the first time we were actually looking for something we could take home with us as there was barely anything interesting to be found and we decided that we wouldn’t go home with empty hands, so here is what I finally got.

First, a miniature vice (or vise for American readers):

This little thingy may look more useless than it actually is. It can be mounted on a table or something using the suction cup at it’s bottom and it stands pretty firm that way. I’m going to use this thing to hold wires and such that I want to solder together so I can use 1 hand to hold 1 wire and the other to hold the soldering iron and since I don’t have a third hand this vice can actually hold the other wire.

Second, some crappy movies:

The first movie (on the left) is Scarecrow Slayer. This is really as bad as it sounds. It’s the only one I’ve watched so far and it’s really so bad that it’s funny. The camerawork is rubbish. The acting is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The story makes no sense at all. It’s not scary. And it’s so cheap that the gore effects aren’t gory at all. But besides all that it was a good laugh and that’s all that matters. The best thing is that it even has a behind the scenes documentary on the disc and some of the girls are pretty nice looking.

The second movie was a great find. I haven’t seen it yet, but I know it’s awesome. I know that because it was mentioned at “de Nacht van de Wansmaak” (night of bad taste) a few years ago. It’s even mentioned on one of the two Nacht van de Wansmaak DVD’s that I mentioned in a distant past on this post and this post. That was so long ago that they aren’t even called New stuff chronicles yet.

The last movie has yet to surprise me, but the title and tagline are promising. “Super Badass: from farmer to bounty hunter” has to be awesome.

That’s it for the PC Dumpdag. Let’s move on.

The same day I also went to Rotterdam to pick up something I bought through an internet marketplace for second hand goods. It’s this:

Yes boys and girls, this is a really old Pong console. But unlike most Pong consoles, this one doesn’t have a big clumsy base station with 2 controllers, this one has it’s base in the controller with all the switches and it’s sound in the other controller. I don’t have much data on it besides these 2 pictures, but I believe it was made in the late 70’s or early 80’s. The brand is Eaca and that even has a page on Wikipedia right here. At first I thought it was from 1971, but that’s impossible according to the Wikipedia text as Eaca produced Pong style consoles from 1975 to 1983. So this one is from sometime between those years. It doesn’t have it’s original power supply unit anymore, but it works on the one I got with it. The knob on the base controller was kind of sticky, but prying a screwdriver under it fixed that problem and now it works like a charm. Playing Pong has never been so much fun. There’s nothing like playing an old game the old fashioned way.

A few weeks ago, even before Christmas, we have the Sinterklaas celebration. Sinterklaas is our version of Santa and the biggest differences are the following.

  • Sinterklaas lives in spain instead of on the North Pole.
  • Sinterklaas has existed in some distant past where Santa has not.
  • Sinterklaas travels by boat and not on a sleigh with flying Reindeer.
  • Sinterklaas has black people to help him out instead of non existant elves.

These black people aren’t negroids by the way. They are this black because of the soot in the chimneys of the houses where the presents are to be delivered. So there is no racism involved in this celebration.

Anyway, I got this:

This is an interesting game. I will never say that Halo is a good game in any way, but this game proves that something good can be made on Halo technology. Stubbs The Zombie is a very fun game running on the Halo Engine on the XBox. As with Halo, there is also a PC version of this game, but as to be expected, the XBox version is far superior.

This game is the other way around zombie game. You don’t get to shoot or slash zombies. Instead, you get to be the zombie and eat people’s brains. Sound fun? It is.

And lastly, I got an XBox console. No 360, just a plain old XBox. My brother’s girl didn’t want it anymore, so I bought it of her. Here’s a pic, nothing else to it.

…End of line.

Drivers ready… Engines ready… GO!

PC gaming, Videogames | Posted by Zhooibaal
Dec 27 2009

Holy crap! I just saw that my last post was from july 25th! That means that I’ve been badly neglecting my very own website! Shame on me!

FUR

Anyway, this post is going to be a legendary one as it is about a game that some people, including me, have created for the PGD Annual 2009. It’s called FUR and it’s a very, very, very fast arcade racing game.

We all know games like WipeOut, Extreme G, Roll Cage, Starwars Episode 1 Racer, F-Zero etc… etc… And some of these are very fast indeed. If you’ve ever played Roll Cage you’ll know what a very fast racing game is all about. We thought: let’s take this speed to the next level and create a bad ass racing game! And so we did.

There are 3 cars and 3 tracks in this arcade style game. With arcade style I mean that everything is arcade style. The driving is ridiculously fast, there is no form of realism whatsoever, the menu’s are extremely simple and there is even a coin-op system.

There are 2 game modes which are single race and championship. Single race costs 1 credit and champion 2 or 3 depending on how well you race. There is a time limit in which you must reach the next checkpoint or the game will be over. Each checkpoint adds a certain amount of time to the time you have left. So if you’re driving very good this time will expand to a point where it’s barely possible to lose on this point anymore. But if you’re driving like a slob you won’t even last till the first checkpoint.

Take a look at this page: http://www.necrosoft.nl/?page_id=653

This is the game’s page on my friend’s website. Here you’ll find some screenshots, a very cool promo movie that I made and a downloadlink. Go check it out and let us know what you think!

When you have checked it out, keep the following in mind before giving negative feedback on performance:

  • This game is very heavy on physics, so a decent CPU is a must.
  • This game is fairly heavy on graphics, so an integrated videochip like most laptops have probably won’t run this very well. You should at least have a GeForce 7 series card (with dedicated video RAM, no shared video RAM) or ATI equivalent.
  • Although the game does run on Windows XP, I’d recommend Windows Vista or 7. I don’t think that the GeForce 7600GS in my old computer is causing the weird lighting, but it’s just that Windows XP is too old. But I could be wrong on that count. If so, I’d just recommend a GeForce 8 series graphics card or ATI equivalent.
  • Use the config tool that is included to configure the controls and scale the performance.
  • Make sure that the framerate will remain above 30 FPS at all times. If not, the game will become unplayable due to laggy input.
  • The best way to scale the performance is to set the resolution to a lower level. If that doesn’t help enough, turn off the motion blur effect and if the game still doesn’t run you should go to a store and get a new computer.

Now… Go and click the link above and check it out and let us know how great this game is!

…End of line.